


Galahad

by Not_You



Series: Masks And Other Stuff [5]
Category: Watchmen (Comic), Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Animal Abuse, Dogs, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Past Abuse, Pets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-26 18:45:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10792524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Not_You/pseuds/Not_You
Summary: In which Walter and Dan rescue a puppy.





	Galahad

"Goddammit, Walter, be careful."

"Being careful," he growls. 

They've got a week until graduation, and Dan doesn't want him to fuck it up by getting tetanus. Or rabies. But there's no way either of them can leave. They both wish Laurie was here so bad they can taste it. She volunteers at veterinary clinics and they're both sure she would know what to do. Dan had been the one to hear the pitiful crying, but it's Walter way down in the dark, with maybe six inches of clearance between the surface of the water and the top of the pipe, because he's the one who can fit. It's a trashy little culvert somewhere in New Jersey. Walter had wanted to take a look at the Home they'd stashed him in, driven by some compulsion to see it again after so long. Dan had had a free afternoon, and has a few bird-watching spots in the area. Now they're in the middle of Operation: Extract The Puppy.

Dan kneels in the muck and reeds, holding Walter's jacket. It's too bulky in this late, cold spring for him to keep it on, even though he's probably turning himself into hamburger on that fucking wire. He abominates it, wills it to rust or bloom into green vines, to be anything less cruel than it is. "Walter..."

"Nearly done." 

His voice is echo-y and toneless down in the pipe, where he's been working away at a tangle of what he had reported as barbed wire and weeds. And a puppy, of course. For a horrible moment, Walter had thought it was baby, but Dan had recognized that peculiar, sad, piercing note as if he was identifying the piping of a cardinal. A puppy, probably about three months old. The desperate crying has stopped, but Dan can still hear little whimperings, so he hopes it's too calm, not too weak. He can't hear that Walter is murmuring to it steadily, things like, "it's going to be all right", and "how'd you get here, sweetie?", and "sure, we can be friends."

It's really only about ten minutes, but it feels like hours before Walter comes slithering back out, filthy and soaked and freezing, with a sodden bundle in his lacerated arms. It's hard to tell much about the puppy, except that it's even more filthy and sodden than Walter, and at the gangly stage, where big working breeds start gaining size and energy and tend to get abandoned. "Has a collar mark," Walter says, as they hurry back to the car, Walter's jacket wrapped around the puppy, Dan's jacket wrapped around Walter despite his protests that it will be ruined. "Just took it off and dumped him."

"Fuckers," Dan mutters, starting Archie up and cranking the heat as high as it will go. The warmth revives the puppy enough to look around, its big, black eyes luminous and calm.

"Didn't even growl," Walter says, tenderly picking weeds out of its fur, which seems to be actually dark under all the filth, but there's no way to be sure. "Was hurting him so much, and he didn't even growl at me." His lower lip wobbles. "Licked my hand." As if in response, the dog does it again, and looks at Dan, wagging its tail, leaving a stain on the door. 

Walter does his best to clean the dog the whole way to the clinic, plucking off the reeds and clumps of mud, careful of the cuts. He's obviously reluctant to hand it off to Dr. Waters, but of course he does. And of course she's horrified and gets right to work. Dan uses the interim to take care of Walter. He doesn't want to leave, but it's going to be a while to clean the little guy and get all those cuts stitched. Walter pauses, turns back, and rests his forehead against the dog's filthy head for a moment, then lets Dan steer him out. He hates needles, but takes his tetanus shot like a man, and opts to go home with Dan for the rest of it.

"Never knew you liked dogs," Dan finally says, with Walter parked in the bathtub, submitting to a gentle scrubbing. Soap in the all the cuts must sting like hell, but Dan washes them all at least twice, letting the water drain so he can rinse Walter for the second time.

"I could never have one, so it never came up." He shrugs his bony shoulders as Dan pours some water over them. "They're... honest. Cowards, usually, but honest."

Dan laughs, and kisses the back of his neck. "You're the only person I can think of who would say that."

"Hurm. It's true, though."

"So it is, I guess." He sluices more water over Walter's cuts. "...I love you, you know."

"I know." He sounds sort of surprised that Dan said it, as if he had remarked upon water being wet, or how things always fall down when you drop them, never sideways. 

Dan just helps him out of the tub and pats him dry, not wanting to aggravate the cuts any further. He tries to take over, but Dan doesn't let him, sitting him down on the closed lid of the toilet to disinfect and bind everything, until his arms look like some kind of half-assed mummy costume. And then he insists on going back to the clinic. There's no way he can keep the dog, but it bounds with joy to see him, disregarded all its tenderly stitched and bandaged cuts. Washed, they can see that he (yes, Walter's initial guess/bias/whatever had been right) is probably mostly black lab, with something else that's probably gonna make him bigger and rangier. Great Dane, some kind of wolfhound, maybe. He wags his tail and limps to Walter. He crouches to scratch him behind the ears and tell him he's a good boy and that he wishes he could keep him.

"We'll find a place for him," Dr. Waters says, watching them. "Still don't know what to call him, though."

Dan looks at the puppy licking a few of the little cuts on Walter's fingers, too small to be wrapped up, and thinks of someone perfect in his courage and gentleness.

Galahad finds a home at Charleton. The scrawled letters from the kids who said their first words in three months to him, or found that his silky hide was the one thing they could touch without kicking or biting, or woke up from nightmare after nightmare to find him a watchful shadow by the bed, are among Walter's most treasured possessions.


End file.
